A constitutional challenge by the Man With No Name to force his release from prison — where he has been held for more than eight years because the government cannot be sure who he is — has been thwarted by his decades of lying and the government’s continuing efforts to prove his identity.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) rejected a broad challenge seeking to limit immigration detention in Canada to six months; it also dismissed his argument that his detention — with no end in sight — is “cruel and unusual treatment,” violating Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law.

The Man With No Name now claims he is Michael Mvogo of Cameroon, but he was previously similarly adamant several other names were his true identity.

Until Canada knows who he is and where he was born, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) cannot deport him. Until he can be deported, the government is unwilling to release him.

As revealed by the National Post, his incarceration has lasted eight years.

Normally, eight years in immigration detention is a “very compelling reasons in favour of release,” wrote IRB adjudicator Harry Adamidis in his recent ruling. In the bizarre case of the Man With No Name, however, little has been normal.

“He has engaged in identity fraud for 28 years,” wrote the adjudicator. “Given the scale of his past deceptions, Mr. Mvogo’s stated identity cannot be accepted at face value.”

He rejected the man’s requests for sweeping change to the immigration detention system in general and his release in particular.

The IRB “does not have the authority to issue an order that establishes a presumptive period of immigration detention for deportees,” he wrote.

He also rejected the argument Mr. Mvogo’s detention is indefinite or the fault of CBSA.

“Mr. Mvogo is the greatest contributor to his lengthy time in detention,” wrote Mr. Adamidis.

“Mr. Mvogo cannot credibly argue that his indefinite detention violates his charter rights, while perpetrating the circumstances which cause his immigration detention to be lengthy.”

In 1986, the man was arrested in Spain for possession of narcotics and identified himself as Philippe Jacques Hauris. Later, he duped the United States into issuing him a passport in the name of Andrea Jerome Walker.

He used that passport to come to Canada in 2005. When he was convicted in 2006 in Toronto for carrying $10-worth of crack, the CBSA tried to deport him but his bogus passport was uncovered.

Since then he has been in limbo.

A global fingerprint search by Interpol, the international police organization, came back with eight different identities. He repeatedly lied about his identity, offering a name and nationality until the lie was proved, then offering a different name.

For years he seemed content to remain in detention. In recent years, his cooperation appears to have increased and the government’s efforts to solve the riddle likewise escalated.

The CBSA even conducted a clandestine operation to return him to Africa, using dodgy travel documents bought from a mysterious Serbian fixer. The mission ended in debacle, with Canadian agents and their prisoner stopped at Guinea’s airport.

A United Nations committee has told Canada Mr. Mvogo’s incarceration violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Canada is a signatory to, and should be released.

The report was not deemed relevant.

“The opinion rendered by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has no legal force in Canada,” Mr. Adamidis wrote, adding it was based on flawed facts.

The CBSA said the integrity of Canada’s immigration system is at stake,

“The CBSA acknowledges that Mr. Mvogo has been detained for removal for a substantial period. However, the length of his detention is owing to his lack of cooperation in establishing his identity and he remains in Canada, despite CBSA’s sustained efforts to effect his removal,” said Anna Pape, a spokeswoman for the agency.

“As detention is costly, alternatives which would mitigate the risk of release are always considered first, as are the length of time to removal, and the cooperation of the person.

“Those who do not cooperate in identifying themselves are responsible for their own detention.”

The IRB decision was made in December, but only released this week through an Access to Information request.

A United Nations committee has told Canada it should free the Man With No Name — an immigrant who has been detained for seven years because the federal government can’t identify who he is, or to where he should be deported.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said the man known as Michael Mvogo should be released immediately and granted reparations by the federal government.

In a case revealed by the National Post, Mr. Mvogo has travelled under a host of aliases over the past several decades; Canada has kept him imprisoned in a immigration holding centre for years because it could not verify his identity. Absent assurances that he would cooperate with immigration officials, and unable to relocate Mr. Mvogo to his still-unknown home country, the detainee has lived in a legal limbo since 2006.

Macdonald Scott, who has long advocated for Mr. Mvogo’s freedom, sent the case to the UN committee: it has decided Mr. Mvogo’s continued detention violates several sections of international law.

“The Tories are not interested in international law. We all know that,” Mr. Scott said. “But we have to look at how this country is being looked at across the world. We’re being looked at as a rogue state; if we want the reputation of being a state that doesn’t follow international [legal] principles.”

Mr. Mvogo arrived in Canada by train in 2005 bearing a fake U.S. passport under the name Andrea Jerome Walker.

He was convicted in 2006 for carrying a small amount of crack cocaine; after he served a short period in prison, Canada tried to deport him to the U.S. The American deemed him a fake, and refused to take him.

A further search by Interpol found at least eight additional identities for the man. He now insists he is Michael Mvogo, from Cameroon — an identity Canada has tried to confirm by reaching out to former school teachers from the African nation.

The Canadian Border Services Agency even conducted a clandestine operation to return Mr. Mvogo to Africa using dodgy immigration papers. It was, however, unsuccessful and Mr. Mvogo has since been held in an Ontario prison.

True identity or no, Mr. Scott believes Mr. Mvogo should be released.

.The mystery man who sits in jail in Canada because immigration officials cannot identify him relies on these documents to make his case.

“There’s no allegation that Michael Mvogo has hurt someone, or caused danger to someone or done something against another person, yet we’re holding him longer than if he had gone to a party and assaulted someone.”

Mr. Scott pointed out that Canada does not have a maximum period for detaining deportees under the Immigration Act.

The UN said Mr. Mvogo has been denied due process similar to what he would have been entitled to if he were convicted of a crime.

“The detention of Mr. Mvogo constitutes violations of article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articles 9 and 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” the UN report read.

The working group recommended Mr. Mvogo be released immediately. It also suggested the government provide “adequate reparations.”

“The duty to provide Mr. Mvogo with compensation for the violations of his rights rests upon the state and should be enforceable before the national courts.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/un-committee-tells-canada-to-free-man-with-no-name-the-immigrant-they-dont-know-where-to-deport/feed3stdThe mystery man who sits in jail in Canada because immigration officials cannot identify him..Canada's bizarre — and failed — attempt to send 'the Man With No Name' to Africa and the mysterious fixer who made it happenhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-bizarre-and-failed-attempt-to-send-the-man-with-no-name-to-africa
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-bizarre-and-failed-attempt-to-send-the-man-with-no-name-to-africa#commentsSat, 21 Dec 2013 00:06:02 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=405875

At the international airport in Conakry, capital of the West African nation of Guinea, four men arrived on an Air France flight from Paris: two were Canadian immigration enforcement officers; another man, the only African among them, was their prisoner, Canada’s so-called Man With No Name because his identity cannot be proven. Completing their unusual foursome was a Serbian businessman working as a “facilitator” for Canada Border Services Agency.

Their arrival — a daring and unorthodox deportation plan using a suspiciously pricey passport arranged by the facilitator with a country the deportee was not a citizen of — quickly turned into a debacle.

Met by suspicious Guinean police, there was a tense confrontation. Threatened with arrest and facing pointed questions about the legitimacy of their prisoner’s travel document, Canada’s immigration officers nervously deleted sensitive messages from their BlackBerrys in case they were seized.

The National Post can reveal that this failed deportation, which CBSA worked to conceal, exposed the involvement of a mysterious facilitator in some of Canada’s most difficult immigration cases, working outside normal channels and using unconventional methods in attempts to deport special cases of long-term illegal immigrants living in Canada to Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon.

An internal review conducted by CBSA said the use of the facilitator violated the agency’s own payment policy, security policy and even Canada’s immigration act.

The government is so desperate to settle this case

But the twisting tale of a foreign businessman trying to solve the already bizarre case of the Man With No Name took even more unexpected turns, with Reg Williams, the CBSA director who called in the facilitator and lost his position, he said, because of the airport debacle, saying he was sacrificed by senior CBSA brass who had approved his plan and were ready to take credit if it had succeeded, but then punished him when it failed.

“They knew this was unusual,” Mr. Williams said in an interview when asked about the case. “They were briefed up and down.”

The circumstances of the aborted deportation and the involvement of the Serbian facilitator angers the immigration consultant working to free the Man With No Name.

“The government is so desperate to settle this case, it seems they are taking extraordinary measures, but to get to the point where they would try to use a fraudulent travel document is crazy. The whole thing is really sketchy,” said Macdonald Scott.

The Man With No Name arrived in Canada on an Amtrak train in 2005 using a bogus U.S. passport in the name of Andrea Jerome Walker. When he was convicted the following year for carrying $10 worth of crack cocaine, CBSA tried to deport him back to the United States — but the name and his passport proved to be false.

For more than seven years, he has lived in jail in Ontario because his identity cannot be confirmed. Until Canada knows who he is and where he was born, officials cannot deport him. A global fingerprint search by Interpol, the international police organization, came back with eight different identities he used before coming to Canada.

Aaron Lynett / National PostReg Williams is grieving his treatment by the Canada Border Services Agency to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and is awaiting a hearing date.

After years of lying to police, CBSA and the Immigration and Refugee Board, claiming several different identities, he now insists he is Michael Mvogo from Cameroon. Unable to prove it, however, the Cameroonian government declined to issue a passport.

It was in the midst of this bizarre state of limbo that Mr. Mvogo, if that is his name, was introduced to Ivan Simic, the facilitator.

Mr. Simic is an international man of some mystery. He travels widely, has diplomatic connections with countries around the world, displays enviable charm and is involved in foreign media projects. Born in March of 1980 in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, near the banks of the Danube River, he maintains a home there but is often travelling.

In late 2010, Mr. Simic visited Canada on a visa declaring him to be the director of the European office of Korea’s Seoul Times newspaper. In his visa application he said the purpose of his visit was to do post-election analysis, visit government institutions, meet South Korea’s embassy staff and promote Canadian tourism in the Korean media. He intended to be in Canada from November 2010 to January 2011.

It was near the end of his trip that Mr. Simic was contacted by Mr. Williams, the director of the Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre (GTEC), Canada’s largest and busiest immigration centre, handling more than half of all immigration enforcement activity in the country.

Mr. Simic was recommended to Mr. Williams by contacts in Europe who said the mystery man had good connections in many African countries.

CBSA certainly had problematic cases — illegal immigrants facing deportation who can’t be removed for one reason or another from Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon.

But the No. 1 headache for CBSA was the man currently known as Mr. Mvogo. The high-profile case meant weekly pressure from CBSA headquarters in Ottawa and regular questions from the minister’s office, Mr. Williams said.

At their first meeting, on Jan. 6, 2011, Mr. Williams showed Mr. Simic a copy of the Post’s published investigation on Mr. Mvogo. Within days, Mr. Simic had taken the story and used portions of it for news stories that appeared in newspapers in the Caribbean and across Africa, in some cases publishing his email address as the person to contact with answers, not the special CBSA hotline.

FileIvan Simic, a Serbian businessman, worked for Canada Border Services Agency as a facilitator for attempted deportations of long-term immigration detainees who can't otherwise be removed from Canada, including the attempted deportation of Canada's so-called Man With No Name.

Mr. Simic offered to help in more direct ways.

CBSA introduced Mr. Simic to Mr. Mvogo inside the immigration holding centre in Toronto where Mr. Mvogo was being held.

“Mvogo was talking to him on a consensual basis. I wasn’t forcing him to talk to him. Mvogo started calling him on his own and talking to him,” Mr. Williams said. “Ivan Simic had a much better rapport with him than CBSA did. It looked like he was making progress.”

Mr. Simic visited Mr. Mvogo several times in the detention centre and talked to him on the phone often. It was to Mr. Simic that Mr. Mvogo finally admitted he wasn’t Michael Gee from Haiti, another false identity he had claimed, and was really from Cameroon. But even that admission did not help as Cameroon’s embassy declined to issue Mr. Mvogo a travel document without proof.

“When they walked in, Ivan Simic was welcomed with open arms, they were ushered right in to the ambassador’s office,” said Mr. Williams. “Iranian diplomats, Ivory Coast diplomats, they all knew him on a first name basis. He did have a lot of contacts.”

Mr. Williams concedes he did not subject Mr. Simic to careful scrutiny. “We didn’t do a background check, we didn’t do a security check, I didn’t think it was necessary because he didn’t have access to CBSA systems or facilities. He was talking to Mvogo on a consensual basis. And he was getting information from him,” he said.

In a matter of weeks, Mr. Simic secured a Guinean passport for use by Mr. Mvogo — although it was in the name of Michael Milimono, a name unrelated to him and with unmatched biographic data.

This was a problem for CBSA.

There was no way we can use a fabricated name on a passport

“I said there was no way we can use a fabricated name on a passport,” said Mr. Williams. “It would have been unthinkable to use the document in the bogus name and … misrepresent a deportee’s identification to another government in the course of a removal. I rejected that document completely. The document would have been deemed to be fraudulent. I don’t think Ivan understood that.”

Before Mr. Simic returned to Serbia, Mr. Williams authorized CBSA to pay him €1,500 for his time spent on the Mvogo case, according to an invoice dated Jan. 24, 2011. The equivalent amount of $2,391.10 was processed as a sole-source government contract and issued through normal channels for a government cheque. Mr. Williams also gave him a few hundred dollars out of his own pocket to pay for his cellphone bill, he said.

When Mr. Simic returned to Canada in the summer of 2011, CBSA was no further ahead on Mr. Mvogo. Mr. Simic offered another chance at taking him to Guinea.

CBSA struck a deal with Mr. Mvogo: Canada would pay for a Guinean travel document, pay his airfare and give him $3,000 cash to start a new life outside Canada if he was willing to go. He asked for $5,000 but CBSA didn’t budge, according to Mr. Williams. He agreed and signed affidavits swearing his name was Michael Mvogo.

After already getting one passport in a false name, Mr. Simic was able to soon secure a laissez passer, a single-journey travel document that can be used in lieu of a passport, in the name of Michael Mvogo. This time, the bio data also matched what Mr. Mvogo claimed, including being born in Cameroon. Issued on Nov. 25, 2011, the document was couriered to CBSA from Guinea’s foreign ministry in Conakry.

And, as unusual as that was, it carried an unusual price tag: $5,000. Foreign travel passes typically cost between $25 to $300.

CELLOU BINANI/AFP/Getty ImagesPeople walking in a street of Conakry, Guinea.

Concern over the propriety of the Guinea documents is heightened by Guinea’s recent history of rampant corruption. The most recent Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Guinea as one of the 30 most corrupt countries in the world. The planned deportation took place just one year after the country’s first democratically elected president took office and before recent efforts to curtail corruption.

“There was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the document, it came directly from the Guinea ministry of foreign affairs with a receipt. I didn’t think it was anything shady,” said Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams said CBSA brass were briefed on the plan – including being told the unusually high price and the “unconventional means” through which it was obtained – but was never cautioned against the plan.

Weeks before the trip to Guinea, an email from senior bosses in Ottawa to Mr. Williams said: “You’re good to go on this one.”

Mr. Simic was paid $5,000 for his effort and provided airfare for the trip — $3,000 upfront and another $2,000 in cash to be given in Conakry after the mission.

On Dec. 17, 2012, two CBSA officers escorted Mr. Mvogo on a flight from Toronto to Paris, where they met Mr. Simic who had flown in from Hungary, CBSA documents show. They flew together to Conakry.

Immediately there were problems

“Immediately there were problems,” says an internal CBSA report filed afterwards by the two officers, David Fyfe and Gary Campbell, who escorted Mr. Mvogo.

Mr. Simic had told them Guinean government officials would greet them and escort them through security, but such contacts were nowhere to be found, the report says.

It was 7 p.m., local time. Mr. Simic “was visibly distraught” and making numerous calls on his phone. The commissioner in charge of airport security started interrogating Mr. Mvogo in French.

“When he asked Mr. Mvogo where he was born, Mr. Mvogo replied Cameroon. This seemed to upset the Commissioner greatly … he was confused as to why we were even attempting to enter Guinea,” says the report. “Mr. Simic was present in the Commissioner’s office during this exchange and did not say a word. He did not offer any explanation or provide any input whatsoever when we were questioned about the travel document he provided.”

The Canadian officers sent worried text messages to CBSA: they were not being let in, authorities were questioning the legitimacy of Mr. Mvogo’s travel document, and they were being threatened with arrest. The nervous officers started deleting sensitive messages from their BlackBerrys in case they were seized.

After hours of tense negotiations, the CBSA officers were allowed to leave the airport to sleep at a hotel; police detained Mr. Mvogo overnight; and Mr. Simic seemed to disappear, the report says. The next day, the Canadians went to the airport and regained custody of Mr. Mvogo but Mr. Simic still could not be reached.

Mr. Williams and Susan Kramer, a CBSA official at the agency’s headquarters in Ottawa, had a lengthy conference call with the commissioner in Conakry pleading for him to let Mr. Mvogo in, Mr. Williams said. It was in vain. Police did not accept the document for Mr. Mvogo was valid.

The escorts and Mr. Mvogo returned to Toronto and the prisoner sent back to jail.

Mr. Simic later said he was detained by police and abandoned by CBSA in Conakry.

“I was immediately detained by the Conakry airport police and my deportation back to Paris failed because the Air France plane was full. I was later escorted to Central Police Station, where I was held until Monday morning,” Mr. Simic later complained to CBSA in a letter.

Mr. Simic wrote that the Guinea transfer failed for several reasons, suggesting a bribe at the airport might have been in order.

But “most importantly,” he wrote, it failed because Mr. Mvogo did not lie to the police: “When asked where he is from, [Mvogo] said he is Cameroonian not Guinean, and that he doesn’t know why we brought him to Guinea.”

The next time Mr. Williams heard about Mr. Simic was three months later after a lengthy letter from Mr. Simic was sent to Luc Portelance, the CBSA president, dated March 26, 2012.

Mr. Simic loves the language of diplomacy.

In his letter of complaint to the CBSA president he begins it like a diplomatic dispatch: “I present my compliments to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officials and wish to use this opportunity to inform you as follows…”

When asked where he is from, he said he is Cameroonian not Guinean, and that he doesn’t know why we brought him to Guinea

The letter, obtained by the Post, outlines his version of events.

“I worked exclusively on problematic cases and long-term cases, and on obtaining documents for clients,” he says of his relationship with CBSA’s GTEC and Mr. Williams.

He says he was working with CBSA to establish an “environment for the CBSA to start deportation of long-term cases, investigate and interview problematic cases/clients, establish relations with the governments that CBSA has no relations with.

“I am very disappointed how GTEC and CBSA treated me, in financial and human terms,” he wrote. He then put an ultimatum to CBSA: “We are now faced with only two options: 1. To continue to work together on a real basis and with mutual respect, or 2. For CBSA to pay what is due to me for my services, and stop working relations.”

In the letter, he claims to have been negotiating with foreign governments on a number of long-term detainee cases, including:

Two cases of Iranian nationals held in Canada on alleged terrorism and immigration violation charges, Mr. Simic says;

Four other deportation cases, three men and a woman, with his diplomatic contacts in Guinea;

Negotiated with the Liberian embassy in Washington, D.C., and applied for travel documents to deport five Liberian men from Canada;

Hammered out a tentative deal with diplomats from South Africa about a South African gangster facing deportation from Vancouver;

Worked on a deportation case to Ivory Coast that failed because CBSA declined to pay for his travel expenses to discuss it in person, he said;

And helped CBSA close a file on a man listed on Canada’s Most Wanted list of illegal immigrants when he spotted Dimitrije Karic in Belgrade and helped CBSA prove he had actually left Canada.

Most of his work on these cases has been put on hold, either because CBSA refused to pay his travel expenses to travel to the countries for face-to-face negotiations or CBSA was unwilling to pay him adequately for his efforts, he wrote.

“It was becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Simic was using the Mvogo case to attempt to get involved in other cases to ‘sell’ his services,” Mr. Williams wrote in his internal response to Mr. Simic’s letter of complaint.

It was an insult to me, it was an insult to my organization and it was an insult to our partners who we were working with

The ramifications for Mr. Williams were significant. He was told he was being removed as director of GTEC, effective the next business day, and transferred to an administrative job, Mr. Williams said.

“It was an insult to me, it was an insult to my organization and it was an insult to our partners who we were working with. I said, ‘No, I’ll just retire.’” His request for early retirement was approved within two hours, he said. On May 22, 2012, after 14 years as GTEC director, Mr. Williams left, disappearing from the office and leaving rumours and questions among staff, lawyers, other agencies and journalists.

An internal review by CBSA’s Security and Professional Standards Directorate then accused him of violating CBSA contracting policies regarding Mr. Simic; breaching its security policy by not first subjecting him to a background check; and breaking the immigration act by hiring a foreign national without a work permit.

Mr. Williams is grieving his treatment to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and is awaiting a hearing date, claiming the review was flawed and conducted in bad faith by CBSA senior managers.

“They just didn’t want any political fallout from this. It was a hot potato for them,” he said of CBSA brass.

“I wasn’t acting alone — everyone up the line knew about it. Key directors in CBSA headquarters knew and supported the approach taken,” he said.

CELLOU BINANI/AFP/Getty ImagesIvan Simic said he was detained by police and eventually abandoned by the Canada Border Services Agency in Conakry, Guinea. He outlined the saga in a letter to the CBSA.

“I’m enjoying my retirement, but I don’t think what happened was right. There was constant and intense pressure from Ottawa to find a way to remove this individual. He was costing tax payers half a million dollars – these are the real-life problems I faced. The CBSA approach is to encourage executives to take different approaches to solve problems. If the removal had worked, they’d take credit for it; when it fails they don’t support you.”

CBSA documents suggest he is right.

A CBSA “Issue Fact Sheet” was prepared the day Mr. Simic’s letter arrived, noting it was “alleging incidents that may reflect poorly on the agency.” The sheet ended with a similar concern: “The allegations asserted by Mr. Simic are significant and can impact the agency should he take his quarrel to the media.”

CBSA also shut the media out of the previously public monthly detention review hearings for Mr. Mvogo after the failed deportation. Up until then, the Post had attended many of his reviews until CBSA requested they be closed. The hearings remained private for a year until media requests to have them reopened were accepted by the IRB.

At his IRB hearings, Mr. Mvogo did speak about the Guinea trips, saying: “I have been, you know, cooperated to deport me,” Mr. Mvogo said in faltering English. “Two times to deport me to Guinea which is not my country… and they send two immigration officer.”

They were clearly afraid of this hitting the media

Mr. Scott, who is Mr. Mvogo’s representative before the IRB, said the CBSA has worked to keep the trip secret.

“They were clearly afraid of this hitting the media, in terms of how quickly they [closed the IRB hearings],” Mr. Scott said. More worrisome for him, however, was that Mr. Mvogo was placed in solitary confinement for months afterwards. He suspects it was to keep his client from revealing the escapade.

“I think it was to keep him from talking to you,” Mr. Scott said.

Although his client agreed to go to Guinea, he did not expect it to go so poorly. Mr. Mvogo was detained in Guinea overnight and again in Paris during the return journey, said Mr. Scott.

Adrian Humphreys / National PostReg Williams outside the CBSA GTEC headquarters he presided over in Toronto.

“He was pretty freaked out. The experience was shocking to him.”

There is also evidence CBSA was planning to boast about the removal to Guinea had it been successful. CBSA prepared a “proactive” communications strategy, meaning it was a story the CBSA wanted to tell. The CBSA planned to leak the news to the Post in a “low-key proactive email,” the communications strategy document says.

Further, it defended the approach as a necessity.

“The CBSA is [sic] carried out this removal in accordance with its mandate,” it said.

Mr. Williams also defends his actions.

“On removals, it is not a black and white issue. These are murky areas — you just have to be careful not to overstep boundaries. This was not a run-of-the-mill case. It was in that light that Simic was brought in. With him, we got further on this case than we had before.

“Detention costs were escalating, he was continuing in detention, the publicity was continuing, there was no end in sight,” he said.

Removals to third countries, although rare, are legal. He said traditional methods of removing Mr. Mvogo had repeatedly failed.

“You had to try to do things differently – not illegally, but differently. I didn’t do everything perfectly here, but I think we did the best anyone could have done at that point.”

The Post has been in email contact with Mr. Simic, who acknowledged his interest and efforts on the case of Mr. Mvogo.

“I have been advised by the CBSA not to get involved in any media inquires and to direct any questions that concerns CBSA back to CBSA,” he said.

A series of requests over two days to CBSA seeking answers to questions and comment on the case has gone unanswered.

Canada Border Services Agency is relying on two retired schoolteachers in Cameroon to help identify Canada’s “Man With No Name” — who has lived in jail for more than seven years because his identity cannot be confirmed.

Until they can confirm who he is and where he was born, immigration officials have been unable to deport him.

He is officially known as Andrea Jerome Walker, even though that is not his name. That was the name on the bogus U.S. passport he used when he arrived in Canada in 2005 and the name he was arrested under when Toronto police found him with $10 worth of crack cocaine.

After his guilty plea in 2006, he was detained for removal as a convicted non-Canadian criminal. Since then, he has told authorities a cascading litany of lies about who he is, shifting to a different biography when one is finally debunked.

Canada has called on Interpol, the international police organization, to help search around the world for information. What came back were eight different identities the man used before he came to Canada.

He now insists he is Michael Mvogo from Cameroon.

The bizarre situation left officials at Thursday’s detention review hearing to deal with him under multiple names.

“We’re going to be starting with Mr. Walker,” the IRB adjudicator, Valerie Currie, told a guard at Central East Detention Centre in Lindsay, Ont., where he is being held.

“Or do you have him under Mr. Mvogo?” she asked.

“Yeah, both,” said the guard, looking at a piece of paper and then bringing him in to sit in front of the video camera that connected him to his hearing in Toronto.

On Thursday, Stephanie Echlin, counsel for CBSA, outlined the agency’s efforts since last month’s hearing to confirm his identity

When he was asked his name, his voice was strong, emphatic: “I’m Mr. Mvogo.”

It was with similar certainty that the National Post has heard him claim, over years of following his case, that he is Andrea Walker from the United States and then Michael Gee from Haiti.

Wearing a loose-fitting, orange prison-issue jumpsuit over a T-shirt of the same colour, he once again sat listening silently. He is used to the routine.

On Thursday, Stephanie Echlin, counsel for CBSA, outlined the agency’s efforts since last month’s hearing to confirm his identity.

CBSA has contacted two former teachers who taught at the schools the man said he attended in his youth in the west central African country. They agreed to look through old school records for any confirmation.

But even if they find a Mr. Mvogo attended the schools, it will not suddenly clear him for deportation. Canada must convince Cameroonian authorities to allow him to return.

His immigration consultant, Macdonald Scott, argued for his release, noting he has complained to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights about the case.

“With the length of detention, he should be released. To follow international law, he should be released; to follow Canadian law, he should be released,” Mr. Scott said.

With the length of detention, he should be released. To follow international law, he should be released; to follow Canadian law, he should be released

More than 90 times since the man’s arrest he has sat through a similar review. Each time he is ordered back to a cell because the IRB cannot believe he will show up for deportation and cooperate with authorities.

Thursday was no different.

“Your identity has not been confirmed nor has your nationality been confirmed,” said Ms. Currie. “The only reason why you have not been removed from Canada is because… of your deceptions.

“I can only imagine what has prompted you to do that. There must be a very compelling reason why you did not reveal your true identity to immigration authorities.”